Dominic points out Jason Gay’s excellent essay on youth sports for the Wall Street Journal, in which Gay argues that the biggest problem with such activities is not that they provide too many “participation trophies” for little effort, but that fewer and fewer are participating to begin with. (Dominic adds that parents sometimes ruin sports for their kids by acting like children themselves.) This decline in participation is having all sorts of deleterious social and physical consequences, as kids are deprived of the many benefits of playing sports. Gay lists some:
We can start with the myriad physical and mental health reasons why children should be athletically active—it’s exercise and exertion; it extricates them from omnipresent screens; it instills a sense of self and positive body image. All that, plus you usually get a cool T-shirt. And maybe a hat.
The benefits of team sports are even more pronounced: learning to cooperate with peers, share common goals and problem-solve as a group. School sports participation has long been linked to improved self-esteem and academic performance. Some employers report seeking out candidates with team sports backgrounds, because they can thrive in a collaborative environment.
Writing last month for Law & Liberty, I similarly extolled the benefits of exercise and sports, especially for kids:
Though much exercise can be done alone, it has a tendency to point outward, to others. Look at the sheer profusion, throughout American life, of activity centered around some form or another of organized exercise. Everything from cycling clubs, charity 5ks, pickleball leagues, local gyms, and even walking around with a friend can provide continued rigor and friendship based on the mutual interest of adults. And children’s sports provide for the young the aforementioned benefits, while also setting them on paths to lifelong activity and serving as the first proving ground for some of the most basic moral virtues.
Beyond the merely physical, these forms of socialization can supply rootedness and particularity. In its organized and spectator forms, exercise and athletics can provide exactly these goods. For athletes, especially younger ones, teams can become worlds unto themselves. They can create meaning, rituals, and memories that form powerful bonds, generating lifelong friendships.
I speak from personal experience here. Last year, after I somehow convinced a few of my National Review colleagues to do a race with me, I recounted how my years as a cross-country runner (grade school, high school, college) affect me still, not only forming my character and habits but also giving me a still-present longing for what John L. Parker Jr., author of Once a Runner, described as “the easy fond intimacy that sports give to young men in groups and that they would consciously or subconsciously miss for the rest of their lives.” (On the day of that race, I got a little taste of that feeling once again.)
So play on, kids. (And parents . . . maybe take Dominic’s advice and calm down just a little bit.)